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Session Submission Summary

Questions of Custody: Puerto Rican Legacies and Collections At Home and Abroad

Thu, May 28, 6:00 to 7:45pm, TBA

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

This panel will address questions of custody related to the salvaging, recollection, organization, preservation, appraisal, celebration or management of papers, artifacts, monuments, spaces and figures that putatively define Puerto Rican historical and literary legacy. It will review some of the legal, ethical, practical, institutional, and epistemological implications of the practices of specific cultural custodians in the island and abroad as they endeavor to secure what Jacques Derrida defined as “an archival space of consignment and legitimacy” for both the material and intangible legacies under their charge. It will consider in particular the subaltern or geopolitical nature of these practices as they occur in or in relation to a Caribbean U.S. territory where troubles with a precarious sovereignty constantly complicate the possibility for such a memorial space. Matters regarding family vs. national, state vs. civic, private vs. public, local vs. foreign, and island vs. mainland disputes over custodianship as well as generational, gender, social, and racial issues will be discussed in relation to three case studies: Adolfo de Hostos’ tenure as Official Historian under U.S. colonial rule; Francisco Matos Paoli’s literary legacy in light of the 2015 Centennial celebration; and the Jack and Irene Delano Archive (through the participation of Jack and Irene’s son, the photographer and professor Pablo Delano, as respondent).

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